Cirque du Soleil's twelfth production, which opened in December 1998, was a landmark for the company in two ways. It was their first non-touring show outside of Las Vegas, and the first to be mounted at a Disney resort: Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, at a custom-built theater at the Downtown Disney (later Disney Springs) shopping/dining district. As well, it was the final Cirque show written and directed by Franco Dragone, who had pulled these duties for most of them up to that point. Amazingly, it premiered less than five months after "O" had arrived on the other side of the country.

Though no Disney elements appear in the show, Dragone and his collaborators took inspiration from that company's knack for re-telling fairy tales and came up with a Cinderella story of their own. Once upon a time, a Cleaning Lady opens the door to an attic filled with strange, colorful personages ("Cirques"), inadvertently causing their world to collide and mingle with the ordinary world of "Urbains" she comes from. Eventually, everyone will be living Happily Ever After.

The name "La Nouba" comes from the French term faire la nouba, which means "to live it up" or "party".

While still running at Walt Disney World, this show was filmed and released on DVD in 2004, and is currently the only resident show that can claim this distinction.

This show contains examples of:

Audience Participation: Surprisingly little for a Cirque show, but one audience member gets to be one of the people jumped over for the climax of the bike act.

Brick Joke: Two in the final few minutes: The floating rock in the clowns' space adventure crashes to Earth at the very end, while the trumpet player who appears in the Opening Ballet turns out to be the Frog Prince the Cleaning Lady weds.

Carrying a Cake: Defied in the original version of the chair balancing act, in which the cake is successfully carried up and up the tower by the performer (by balancing it on his head, etc.).

Creepy Circus Music: While the act it supported (chair balancing) was lighthearted, "A La Lune" has aspects of this at the beginning, including a menacing snatch of the famous "Entrance of the Gladiators".

Cut Song: "A La Lune" as of 2010, since the balancing act was dropped — unless the rola bola act that serves as an understudy for the juggling act is on.

Frogs and Toads: The attic being the curious place that it is, a frog — unseen by the audience, but represented by sound effects, miming by the other actors, and a spotlight — arrives in it by model train at one point.

Genre Savvy: The Cleaning Lady in suspecting that the frog is a transformed prince.

Large Ham: The Green Bird, at least in the DVD version. According to the performer, the character originally had a scene where she would cry out in alarm and faint. Then one day when she was feeling angry about things in general, the performer decided the character should totally freak out before collapsing. The audience loved it so it stayed in.

An Acrobatic Pierrot heads up the climactic power track/trampoline number.

Once Upon a Time: The title of the song for the post-prologue dance/German wheel act, which kicks off the action proper; the soundtrack album's version starts with a child reciting a bedtime story that starts with these words.

Opening Ballet: The show has a prologue featuring a procession of Cirques around the theater's main aisle; this is followed by a second dance sequence that would, ordinarily, serve as this.

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